A great number of years in succession there existed a certain system of teaching children in junior, primary, grammar, secondary schools. This system worked correctly resulting in numerous skilled graduating students, who worked and still work for the welfare of the country. According to the system each school has its own curriculum, but it has to include certain compulsory subjects which are an integral part of the curriculum set by the government. This Curriculum establishes certain standards that are the same in every school. In the past teachers stood in front of the whole class, explained the necessary material writing on the blackboard or on the whiteboard, and at the same time, children made useful notes in their copy-books. Children developed their reading skills in the process of reading different literary works, poems, and essays. They trained their writing skills due to the writing of essays and learning the most important and useful approaches in the writing process. But it is a well-known fact that nowadays skilled, hard-working and purposeful people are successful. In order to make people educated, broad-minded, intelligent the New York City Department of Education has worked out a set of special instructions concerning the educational process. These directions can be regarded as a new simple constructive way of developing the reading and writing skills of children. The program stands on the idea that all children are capable to cope with learning how to write and to read. Skills in reading and writing give them chance to feel them on the grade level that is comfortable for them. This working project is called the “workshop model”. Firstly, it was elaborated for instructions in science, also for literacy at the common levels of studying, but then it began to cover a wide range of subjects for all levels. This “workshop model” was designed by Carmen Farina and Lucy Calkins.
According to this standard, teachers decide on their own what exactly their children have to know, in what aspects of the theme they should gain an understanding. Children learn, improve and master writing and reading skills working with other children and participating lively in various kinds of activities in class. The process of expressing their thoughts, dreams, desires help them understand better not only themselves but also the people who surround them. They begin to realize themselves as a part of the society as directions of this model suppose work of children in small groups. These groups consist of a pair of children or four of them. This favored setting helps them disclose as personalities in the process of discussing and solving different problems, filtering and memorizing necessary information, obtaining knowledge. The whole class is divided into small periods that have their specific functions and recommended activities. During the first 7-10 minutes teacher has to present direct instructions for the whole class. Here children find out what the teacher suppose to do in this class and what material they need to cope with. These minutes are known as “mini-lesson”. During the next 20 minutes, children have to work in small groups and discuss or master by practice the teacher’s concept presented in the “mini-lesson”. At that time teacher has to listen to every group in the chain, help if children need or explain some obscure facts individually. At the end of the class children discuss the presented concept, share thoughts, impressions, and ideas with each other. Sometimes children do this voluntarily, sometimes the teacher makes them do this. There are also two inalienable features of these directions. All desks in classrooms are grouped in four. Children face each other. In some cases, children sit with their backs turning to the front of the room, but this feature has certain advantages – children feel the boundaries of their influence, they teach how to behave in collective, they begin to know near peers better with all their strong and weak traits of character. Also “workshop model” speaks in support of the absence of a board of any kind. Teachers present the new material orally. Children in their turn develop their memory, imagination, and thinking, ability to listen to the teacher, and to highlight the main ideas among others. This technique reforms the idea about the studying process, putting right the relationships between teachers and children.
This “workshop model” presupposes different kinds of reading. They are reading to children, reading with children, and reading by children. Writing in its turn also can be writing for children, writing with children, and writing by children. Each of these aspects has certain advantages.
Reading to children:
- enables to catch sentence structure and stylistic concepts of work,
- motivates a desire to be capable to read,
- helps to understand story structure,
- enables to feel vocabulary of work,
- develops skills of foreseeing.
Reading with children:
- helps to develop skills in comprehension,
- enables to keep in mind frequency words,
- develops the feeling of phonics.
Reading by children:
- develops the feeling of self–confidence,
- teaches to improve the fluency of speech,
- gives chance to practice reading strategies.
Writing skills as well as reading skills need to be developed. One can distinguish three types of writing and their advantages.
Writing for children:
- help to apply the teacher’s writing model.
Writing with children:
- learns to follow rules of punctuation, capital letters,
- helps to find correspondence sounds and letters,
- improves print strategies.
Writing by children:
- gives practice in various types of writing,
- helps to become an independent writer,
- helps to develop responsibility for own works.
The “workshop model” has definite advantages over other educational programs, but also it has its opponents. Some teachers consider it irrational to build every class around a talk in small groups. It is very often the case that many topics cannot find their reflection in this model; they cannot be inserted into it; it depends upon the theme, subject, and children. Usually class amounts from thirty-two to thirty-four children with different levels of knowledge and upbringing. It is a well-known fact that children of the same level can collaborate with each other. If it is not so, children who do not have enough knowledge will be busy with outside matters. Children cannot orientate themselves on pages of books. The teacher is expected to show and explain to them the necessary material. From the psychological point of view, children will conceal what they do not understand, they will sit and look in a book assuring that everything is clear. Not very clever children need more practice, explanation, specification, guidance – this model restricts all the efforts of teachers to help such children. As a result, they just are out of the group and feel horrible, humble. They cannot behave as they are, they imitate leaders and begin to lose their faith in themselves, and they lose their individualities behind the leaders’ personalities. In groups, they are dependent people. Their own points of view hide somewhere deep in their minds. It is a rare occasion when someone begins to think, unlike the others. Sometimes it is difficult to explain new material or a new theme in the period of ten minutes; also this “mini-lesson” includes homework reviews. Children can find out more information about the new theme from the teacher rather than peers. These directions also make no good to teachers, who in their turn need no more years of experience, broad imagination to find new approaches to children, who can forget their own style of teaching. Also, there is one more crucial issue about this “workshop model”. In the past children developed their individual personalities from the early years of their lives. Nowadays educational staff speaks in support of the opposite thing. In college, children are supposed to be independent and self–confident people. And teachers worry about them as in school they teach to work in groups, think collectively, and solve various problems altogether.
In conclusion, I would like to admit that every theory or model has its own strong and weak points. Only in some years, people will estimate this project’s true worth. The designers are expected to be proud of themselves as it is viewed as a good useful method combining with other approaches. A lot of teachers use it in their educational process. I am fully confident that there will be certain supporters of this “workshop model” in the future. Rome was not built in a day.
Works Cited
The Workshop Model. Web.